Heart of Sailing

Wealth & Wellness Team Member Needed!!!

ABA Therapist Needed

TACA Families & Friends Campaign - Help Us Reach Our Goal

NIH grants to help early intervention efforts for infants, toddlers with autism

Amazing Child Outdoor Adventures

FREE Juice Plus+ Seminar -- Last Chance to RSVP

Hypericum perforatum (St John's Wort) for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents

'Faulty' Brain Connections May Be Responsible For Social Impairments In Autism

New Study Links Mercury from the Thimerosal in Vaccines with Autism

Conflicts of Interest: Understanding the Safety Issues Around Prenatal 3D Ultrasound

NYT: Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay

Hidden CDC Data Confirms Vaccine-Autism Link

Pediatrician Dr. William Sears "prescribes" Juice Plus+ to all his patients

Mercury product listing & trade names

(Pictured is Tony Saraf)

Heart of Sailing introduces sailing to children with developmental disabilities as a form of education and recreational therapy.

Empowering Through Information & the Fostering of Connections

I never endorse anyone or anything. Opinions expressed in what I send out, may not be shared by me. Everything is for informational purposes only.

People who "advertise" through this newsletter have never been checked out by me. This includes professionals and even people who are interested in babysitting, etc.

Please take the time to thoroughly check out anyone and everyone that will be working with or caring for your child. We are all sadly aware, through news stories and word of mouth, of people who pray upon special needs children because of their extra vulnerability.

Thank you,
Valerie Dodd-Saraf
My enewsletters are archived on my website:
www.ValeriesList.com

My Melaleuca Team and I are looking for people who want to have a part time home based business. We are especially looking for a person who is fluent in Spanish (reading, writing and speaking). Income depends on how much time and effort you can put into it. It is possible to earn a couple hundred to several thousand dollars per month.

For more information about the company, please click here and then click on "Take a Tour".

Valerie,
We are looking for a very experienced ABA therapist for a high functioning 3 year old. We live in San Diego near the downtown area and would like to do the therapy in-home. Recommendations on specific therapists vs therapy companies would be most helpful. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Rob

We just wanted to remind everyone that there is still time to participate in TACA's 2008 Family and Friends Campaign. The campaign runs through June 30th. We are more than half way to our goal with more than $50,000 raised. Please help us help families with autism through this important campaign. All incentives will be mailed to fundraisers and donors in July! If you have any questions, please contact ektaca@gmail.com

A $7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will help researchers at the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Centerfocus more closely on early intervention for infants and toddlers with autism, the Detroit Free Press reported recently.

The newspaper said this is the third such grant in recent months that will help the University of Michigan and Wayne State University study the origins of autism, as well as possible treatment for the disorder and the impact of early intervention.

While even as babies, most people search others' faces to help assess situations, UMACC Director Catherine Lord told the newspaper that a child with autism might not. Lord said she believes infants can be encouraged to seek out such feedback, which would establish a routine that could help as they learn to navigate the world.

The grant adds to about $5 million of NIH funds recently awarded to the UMACC for similar early intervention, Lord told the newspaper. According to the Free Press, a nearly $5.8 million NIH grant will fund research toward a possible treatment at WSU.

Amazing Child Outdoor Adventures is coming to Thousand Oaks this summer! This trip is for children ages 8-12 who are highly verbal and conversational and their siblings. The dates for the trip are 7/28- 8/1 and 8/3-8/8.

Amazing Child, Inc.
Feel free to address any questions to Kathleen Kelly at amazingchild@bellsouth.net .

Speaker: Smokey Santillo, N.D.
Developer of the Juice Plus+ Concept

Thursday, June 26, 2008, at 7:00pm
Holiday Inn - Stadium/Mission Valley
Main Ballroom
3805 Murphy Canyon Rd.
San Diego 92123 (I-15 and Aero Dr.)

Dr. Santillo has spent a lifetime sharing his knowledge with others, first as a lecturer for "The Juice Man", then as the man behind a revolutionary idea: to take juicing fruits and vegetable one step further by reducing the juices to highly concentrated powdered form. Along the way he secured a degree as a Doctor of Naturopathy, earned the designation of Master Herbalist, and authored three best selling books.

Join me as one of North America's leading naturopaths tells us about "The Power of Fruits & Vegetables" and explains how Juice Plus+ works.

To reserve your seat, please contact Valerie Saraf by June 18th.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects 3% to 12% of children in the United States. Up to 30% of these children do not respond to pharmaceutical medications or have adverse effects such as nausea, insomnia, or weight loss from the medications. For these reasons, many parents seek complementary or alternative medicine for their children with ADHD. Complementary or alternative medicine treatments used for pediatric ADHD include massage, dietary changes, dietary supplements, and herbal treatments.5-9 In the United States, the most common herbal treatments used by children with ADHD are St John's wort, Echinacea species, and Ginkgo biloba.

ScienceDaily (Jun. 12, 2008) - New evidence shows that the brains of adults with autism are "wired" differently from people without the disorder, and this abnormal pattern of connectivity may be responsible for the social impairments that are characteristic of autism.

WASHINGTON, DC - A newly published study in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences ValeriesList@aol.com, the official journal of the World Federation of Neurology 1, links mercury from the Thimerosal in vaccines with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. This study represents six years worth of effort by independent researchers to gain access to hidden US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). In 2003, the Government Reform Committee of the US House of Representatives asserted, "(a)ccess by independent researchers to the Vaccine Safety Datalink database is needed for independent replication and validation of CDC studies regarding exposure of infants to mercury-containing vaccines and autism."

Like many things, the safety of ultrasound depends on the level of exposure. Studies of the lower exposures common in the 1970s and 1980s are fairly reassuring. But since 1993, allowable exposure levels have risen dramatically, and little research has been done on the effects of these higher doses.

Meanwhile the use of prenatal ultrasound continues to expand in what one consumer advocate calls "the biggest uncontrolled experiment in history." (1) In 2000, approximately 2.7 million women in the United States received prenatal sonograms-some 67 percent of pregnant women. (2)

When ultrasounds provide useful medical information, such as due date or indications of malformations, most doctors consider the risks acceptable. After a medical ultrasound exam, parents typically take home a simple 2D printout showing their fetus, and such pictures have become a virtual ritual of pregnancy in many industrialized countries.

By GARDINER HARRIS and BENEDICT CAREY - NY Times

A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.

By failing to report income, the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and a colleague in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, may have violated federal and university research rules designed to police potential conflicts of interest, according to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Some of their research is financed by government grants.

Like Dr. Biederman, Dr. Wilens belatedly reported earning at least $1.6 million from 2000 to 2007, and another Harvard colleague, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley's investigators. But even these amended disclosures may understate the researchers' outside income because some entries contradict payment information from drug makers, Mr. Grassley found.

In one example, Dr. Biederman reported no income from Johnson & Johnson for 2001 in a disclosure report filed with the university. When asked to check again, he said he received $3,500. But Johnson & Johnson told Mr. Grassley that it paid him $58,169 in 2001, Mr. Grassley found.

The Harvard group's consulting arrangements with drug makers were already controversial because of the researchers' advocacy of unapproved uses of psychiatric medicines in children.

In an e-mailed statement, Dr. Biederman said, "My interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study," and he said he took conflict-of-interest policies "very seriously." Drs. Wilens and Spencer said in e-mailed statements that they thought they had complied with conflict-of-interest rules.

John Burklow, a spokesman for the National Institutes of Health, said: "If there have been violations of N.I.H. policy - and if research integrity has been compromised - we will take all the appropriate action within our power to hold those responsible accountable. This would be completely unacceptable behavior, and N.I.H. will not tolerate it."

The federal grants received by Drs. Biederman and Wilens were administered by Massachusetts General Hospital, which in 2005 won $287 million in such grants. The health institutes could place restrictions on the hospital's grants or even suspend them altogether.

Alyssa Kneller, a Harvard spokeswoman, said in an e- mailed statement: "The information released by Senator Grassley suggests that, in certain instances, each doctor may have failed to disclose outside income from pharmaceutical companies and other entities that should have been disclosed."

Ms. Kneller said the doctors had been referred to a university conflict committee for review.

Mr. Grassley sent letters on Wednesday to Harvard and the health institutes outlining his investigators' findings, and he placed the letters along with his comments in The Congressional Record.

Dr. Biederman is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field's attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, which is characterized by severe mood swings, and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children. The Grassley investigation did not address research quality.

Doctors have known for years that antipsychotic drugs, sometimes called major tranquilizers, can quickly subdue children. But youngsters appear to be especially susceptible to the weight gain and metabolic problems caused by the drugs, and it is far from clear that the medications improve children's lives over time, experts say.

In the last 25 years, drug and device makers have displaced the federal government as the primary source of research financing, and industry support is vital to many university research programs. But as corporate research executives recruit the brightest scientists, their brethren in marketing departments have discovered that some of these same scientists can be terrific pitchmen.

To protect research integrity, the National Institutes of Health require researchers to report to universities earnings of $10,000 or more per year, for instance, in consulting money from makers of drugs also studied by the researchers in federally financed trials. Universities manage financial conflicts by requiring that the money be disclosed to research subjects, among other measures.

The health institutes last year awarded more than $23 billion in grants to more than 325,000 researchers at over 3,000 universities, and auditing the potential conflicts of each grantee would be impossible, health institutes officials have long insisted. So the government relies on universities.

Universities ask professors to report their conflicts but do almost nothing to verify the accuracy of these voluntary disclosures.

"It's really been an honor system thing," said Dr. Robert Alpern, dean of Yale School of Medicine. "If somebody tells us that a pharmaceutical company pays them $80,000 a year, I don't even know how to check on that."

Some states have laws requiring drug makers to disclose payments made to doctors, and Mr. Grassley and others have sponsored legislation to create a national registry.

Lawmakers have been concerned in recent years about the use of unapproved medications in children and the influence of industry money.

Mr. Grassley asked Harvard for the three researchers' financial disclosure reports from 2000 through 2007 and asked some drug makers to list payments made to them.

"Basically, these forms were a mess," Mr. Grassley said in comments he entered into The Congressional Record on Wednesday. "Over the last seven years, it looked like they had taken a couple hundred thousand dollars."

Prompted by Mr. Grassley's interest, Harvard asked the researchers to re-examine their disclosure reports.

In the new disclosures, the trio's outside consulting income jumped but was still contradicted by reports sent to Mr. Grassley from some of the companies. In some cases, the income seems to have put the researchers in violation of university and federal rules.

In 2000, for instance, Dr. Biederman received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study in children Strattera, an Eli Lilly drug for attention deficit disorder. Dr. Biederman reported to Harvard that he received less than $10,000 from Lilly that year, but the company told Mr. Grassley that it paid Dr. Biederman more than $14,000 in 2000, Mr. Grassley's letter stated.

At the time, Harvard forbade professors from conducting clinical trials if they received payments over $10,000 from the company whose product was being studied, and federal rules required such conflicts to be managed.

Mr. Grassley said these discrepancies demonstrated profound flaws in the oversight of researchers' financial conflicts and the need for a national registry. But the disclosures may also cloud the work of one of the most prominent group of child psychiatrists in the world.

In the past decade, Dr. Biederman and his colleagues have promoted the aggressive diagnosis and drug treatment of childhood bipolar disorder, a mood problem once thought confined to adults. They have maintained that the disorder was underdiagnosed in children and could be treated with antipsychotic drugs, medications invented to treat schizophrenia.

Other researchers have made similar assertions. As a result, pediatric bipolar diagnoses and antipsychotic drug use in children have soared.

Some 500,000 children and teenagers were given at least one prescription for an antipsychotic in 2007, including 20,500 under 6 years of age, according to Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager.

Few psychiatrists today doubt that bipolar disorder can strike in the early teenage years, or that many of the children being given the diagnosis are deeply distressed.

"I consider Dr. Biederman a true visionary in recognizing this illness in children," said Susan Resko, director of the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, "and he's not only saved many lives but restored hope to thousands of families across the country."

Longtime critics of the group see its influence differently. "They have given the Harvard imprimatur to this commercial experimentation on children," said Vera Sharav, president and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a patient advocacy group.

Many researchers strongly disagree over what bipolar looks like in youngsters, and some now fear the definition has been expanded unnecessarily, due in part to the Harvard group.

The group published the results of a string of drug trials from 2001 to 2006, but the studies were so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive, experts say. In some studies testing antipsychotic drugs, the group defined improvement as a decline of 30 percent or more on a scale called the Young Mania Rating Scale - well below the 50 percent change that most researchers now use as the standard.

Controlling for bias is especially important in such work, given that the scale is subjective, and raters often depend on reports from parents and children, several top psychiatrists said.

More broadly, they said, revelations of undisclosed payments from drug makers to leading researchers are especially damaging for psychiatry.

"The price we pay for these kinds of revelations is credibility, and we just can't afford to lose any more of that in this field," said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, which finances psychiatric studies. "In the area of child psychiatry in particular, we know much less than we should, and we desperately need research that is not influenced by industry money."

WASHINGTON, DC - A newly published study in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences,[1][1] the official journal of the World Federation of Neurology,[2][2] links mercury from the Thimerosal in vaccines with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

This study represents six years worth of effort by independent researchers to gain access to hidden US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). In 2003, the Government Reform Committee of the US House of Representatives asserted, "(a)ccess by independent researchers to the Vaccine Safety Datalink database is needed for independent replication and validation of CDC studies regarding exposure of infants to mercury- containing vaccines and autism."